


Such a Simple Thing

by Yeomanrand



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Hand Kink, Intimacy, M/M, POV Male Character, POV Third Person, Past Tense, Post The Great Game, Pre-Slash, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-11
Updated: 2011-10-11
Packaged: 2017-10-24 12:55:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeomanrand/pseuds/Yeomanrand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson should have suspected that among his many other unlikely skills, Sherlock had a talent for relieving carpal tunnel syndrome...</p><p>Teaser: <i>"Flexor and extensor carpi radiali," Sherlock said, abstractedly, "and the palmaris longus. Massage shouldn't help, of course, the median nerve is far too deep to be stimulated with surface pressure and relaxing the muscle doesn't expand the transverse carpal ligament."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Such a Simple Thing

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt on the [LiveJournal sherlockbbc_fic](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/12432.html?thread=63710864#t63710864) kink meme: _When John gets carpal tunnel, Sherlock soon decides he can do better a better job than John's prescription... and so he offers John a hand massage._ (full prompt at link)
> 
> Beta by my dear [shinychimera](http://archiveofourown.org/users/shinychimera/works). Any remaining errors and Americanisms my own.

"Bugger it all," John snapped, leaning back from the small laptop; flexing and relaxing his fingers then violently shaking his hand in the hopes of getting rid of the edge-of-painful tingling. Carpal tunnel syndrome, repetitive stress injury, however one cared to diagnose the problem it was bloody irritating.

"So the scrip's not worth anything, I take it?"

"Do _not_ say I told you so, Sherlock. It's beneath you," John said, answering the superior tone of his flatmate's question as much as the words.

"Hm."

Distracted, then; John re-read the entry his creeping discomfort had interrupted, listening for the rustle of newspaper or the creak of violin case hinges. He reached out to finish typing the sentence.

"John," Sherlock said from near enough to send John about an inch out of his chair, already swiveling to meet the threat he knew Sherlock didn't present. Sherlock fell silent, thoughts likely forced out of their channel by John's veteran's reflexes; he made himself take a deep breath and relax a bit.

"What?" he finally managed, clipped and terse; fortunately, Sherlock never let anyone else's emotional state bother him. Straight off his back, like water off a duck.

"Give me your hand."

"Pardon?" He felt himself blink twice and then frown. Sherlock had extended his own hand; John looked at it, then back up at Sherlock's face. Caught the faint thinning of his lips.

"Your hand, John."

Sighing internally because it was pointless to try and anticipate what the man had in mind, John set his hand in Sherlock's. He never would have predicted the application of some sort of oil, nor long fingers probing at his forearm just above the wrist, then gently beginning to rub.

He kept his eyes on their hands, not quite trusting himself to look at Sherlock's face.

"Flexor and extensor carpi radiali," Sherlock said, abstractedly, "and the palmaris longus. Massage shouldn't help, of course, the median nerve is far too deep to be stimulated with surface pressure and relaxing the muscle doesn't expand the transverse carpal ligament."

John's lips pursed because he couldn't decide if he should laugh at Sherlock for giving him an anatomy lesson or relax into the touch and the soothing reassurance of Sherlock's voice mutttering Latin names for muscle and bone.

"And how did you come by the knowledge that it does help?" he asked, when Sherlock fell silent a moment; long thumbs stroking evenly up the palmar abductor. Sherlock looked up at him and frowned.

"Experimentation, of course," he answered, in his best _could you try not to be a_ complete _idiot?_ tone.

"Of course," John echoed, giving a slight roll of his eyes.

Not that he was the slightest bit surprised when Sherlock turned out to be right.

He was, however, caught completely off-guard the following evening. They'd just finished takeaway Chinese — and Sherlock spent the whole meal fidgeting with his chopsticks; John figured he ingested half a won ton and two mouthfuls of noodles, total — and were in the middle of a discussion about when DI Lestrade was going to decide he needed Sherlock after all on the current mysterious homicide leading the news. Halfway through a sentence, Sherlock abruptly rose to his feet and exited the room. John trailed off, shaking his head and deciding the comment wasn't worth completing anyway. He started clearing the table one-handed, determinedly not watching after Sherlock.

John was slowly learning not to expect much of anything where Sherlock was concerned, a sort of _que sera sera_ attitude he wasn't sure he could manage with anyone else.

And yet.

Sherlock came back into the room, rubbing his hands together and John caught the faintest unexpected whiff of lemons when he held them out to John. Who looked first at the ever-so-slightly glistening hands, then suspiciously up at Sherlock's face.

"Hand, John."

There was never any point in objecting to Sherlock's imperiousness; John still leaned back against the counter.

"It's bothering you again." A statement, and arguing was futile. Sherlock resumed the conversation as though it had never been interrupted, answering John's unfinished comment and massaging at the midpoint of John's radius, working his way methodically downward. Only when John realized Sherlock was working the last knots out of his palm did he recognize neither of them had said a word for several minutes. How long, exactly, he wasn't sure; he could have asked — Sherlock undoubtedly _did_ know — but he didn't want to disrupt the silence.

Lestrade called exactly when Sherlock had predicted, and so the next two nights they were wrapped up in the new case. Sherlock confounded John again by not actually asking, just reaching out and pulling John's hand into his own in the wee hours of the morning, when he'd reached a point in his deductions he couldn't get 'round. Neither of them said anything: John from surprise first, followed by a reluctance to get barked at for interrupting Sherlock thinking; Sherlock presumably because he was mulling over what he'd seen, what they'd learned, a different symbol left in the library, a remembered message with five pips. His pale eyes were narrowed and hard at first, brows drawn down, mobile face reflecting the concentration John had painfully learned meant he was shut out.

If he thought that expression was incongruous with the gentle action of Sherlock's hands, well, at least he got to keep the notion to himself; the first night he nearly fell asleep before Sherlock finished; the second, he watched Sherlock's face slowly soften into the twitching energetic smile he knew meant Sherlock had finally cracked the case. And, indeed, Sherlock was up and at his phone the moment John's fingertips slid through his.

A full week of this, and John was the one running through the anatomy lesson in his head: carpals, metacarpals, and proximal, intermediate, and distal phalanges, thenar and lumbrical muscles; and distracted because Sherlock's hands were so damn deft and strong. He rested with eyes closed, listening to their breathing in the quiet flat, feeling Sherlock's thumbs work widening circles across the palmar face of his wrist until every surface had been eased. He opened his eyes, trying once again to read Sherlock's maddeningly neutral expression.

He knew what Sherlock thought of himself. He'd heard _high-functioning sociopath_ from the man's own lips, but he also knew Sherlock was a keen observer not only of the things around him but of human nature; he couldn't possibly be unaware of the intimacy of this moment.

Could he?

"You're thinking very loudly," Sherlock observed, simple and soft, without any of the venomous arrogance present when he told DI Lestrade to _shut up_ for the same reason. "You've got questions."

John did, of course, a great many of them and several only half-formed, but he looked into Sherlock's inquisitive face and shook his head. Reminded of the first time he'd been pulled along in Sherlock's wake, waiting until he was invited to ask everything tumbling through his head, and the only proper answers he'd gotten had been about himself; nothing of where they were going nor anything about Sherlock until the very end.

"Nothing important," John said; his questions weren't about _facts_ , didn't have concrete answers. Better to keep the insubstantial from coming between them than to risk their getting lost.

"No?"

"Maybe clearer to say too important to ask," he allowed, tilting his head to study Sherlock, noting for the first time the faint crow's feet starting to show, lines that deepened just a touch when his pale eyes flicked down to John's lips and he echoed John's smile. "Sherlock..."

"John?"

"Still married to your work?"

"Just so," Sherlock answered, the ghost of a laugh beneath the words. Relief, perhaps. But relaxed and _intimate_ ; such a contrast to the rushed, practiced speech at Angelo's. And he continued to stroke John's wrist as if it had become one of the catalog of possessions he might touch with impunity. "But still flattered. More than."

"Fine. Good, good." John was a bit relieved, himself. Something had eased between them, a fence mutually pulled down; John reached out with his free hand to brush Sherlock's unruly fringe from his forehead.

Sherlock's touch stilled; he looked up into John's eyes and his smile broadened, eyebrow twitching. John had an inkling Sherlock was concocting a series of experiments to find the best "preventive medicine" for carpal tunnel syndrome.

He grinned back. Somehow, that was fine too.


End file.
